


And There's Screaming in the Stillness

by sixbeforelunch



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, They're all so broken but it's going to be okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-16
Updated: 2008-09-16
Packaged: 2020-10-14 07:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20597300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sixbeforelunch/pseuds/sixbeforelunch
Summary: "They're cracking. Listen to them walk down the hall and you can hear the pieces falling off, a tinkling sound like bells."





	And There's Screaming in the Stillness

Vala says she thinks they should have a big party to celebrate. It's typical Vala when she bounces in to see him. She's loud and she smiles too big and she cracks jokes about checking to make sure Cam's catheter was removed correctly. She sits with her feet up on the blue plastic chair next to his bed and in the silences between bawdy jokes, Cam can almost hear her start to shatter. 

There are cracks running through them all. The little hairline fractures that have been there for a long time are spreading out in spiderwebs—_multiplying like replicators_ Cam tries very hard not to think. They've been running on stress and duty and caffeine and sleepless nights for too long. They're ready to break under the sheer weight of having time to think.

They need to break, Cam decides, and they need a safe place to do it. He knows he does, and he's pretty sure he knows these people well enough now to read the signs. Sam's not coming out of her lab. Jackson's taken more personal days in the last two weeks than he has in the year prior and grapevine says that on the days he does come in, he spends half his time in the briefing room, statue still and contemplating the stargate. 

Teal'c comes in to visit him a few times a day and three times now he's mentioned something that happened on _Odyssey_ during those five long decades that Cam is grateful he doesn't remember. Not like he wanted to share, like he _forgot_ for just a second there that Cam wasn't there, that that didn't happen except for how it did.

They're cracking. Listen to them walk down the hall and you can hear the pieces falling off, a tinkling sound like bells.

A few days after the docs get together and decide he's not going to drop dead the second he steps out of the infirmary, he goes off in search of his team and puts all those leader-type qualities he's been working on over the years to good use.

He finds Sam in her lab. She's staring off into space. There's a near-full cup of coffee by her left hand and she's holding a pencil with her right, chewing the eraser.

"Sam."

She jumps, blinks, and takes a few seconds to focus on him.

"Cameron."

He likes the direct approach for these things. "My place. We're leaving in half an hour. Get dressed."

She shakes her head. "I have to finish—"

"No, you don't," Cam says.

But Sam keeps talking. "The new specs for the naquada reactor, trying to integrate the Asgard technology onto _Odyssey_ without giving away our position in hyperspace, not to mention—"

Cam puts a hand on her back, between her shoulder blades. "Sam. Listen to me. It's okay. There's no rush. You can take a break."

He feels the tension run out of her back under his hand. She laughs a little. "Sorry. I think I've forgotten what it's like not to be under pressure."

Cam grins. "Yeah. I think we all have. Meet up on level 11 in thirty, okay?"

Sam nods. "Sure."

She'll forget and get wrapped up in something else before Cam even makes it to the elevator. He makes a mental note to come back and get her when they're almost ready to leave.

Vala's quarters are on level 25 along with the rest of the residential rooms. 

If the SGC were high school level 25 would be where the cool kids hung out. The E-6s and below sleep in the barracks levels 12 through 14 and the civilians get dorms on level 15. The more senior civilian scientists and the senior NCOs can use the two person accommodations on level 26 an as-needed basis, but it's only SGC senior personnel and SG team members that have access to the individual rooms with their own shower on level 25. Still, no one except Teal'c and Vala has a room that's technically theirs.

'course, Jackson and Carter got together one day and took over one of the individual rooms at the end of the hall, brought their own sheets in, and engaged in a campaign of subtle intimidation against anyone else who slept there. Every once in a while, a new officer will come in, mutter "well it's not like their names are on it", and flop down on the Egyptian cotton. They never try it more than once.

Cameron's not quite sure what they've got going on in there, but the one time he asked (very politely) if he could sleep in there, Jackson said, "Yeah, just give me a minute to turn something off."

Whatever the something was, it's the difference between a good night's sleep and a bleary eyed morning of complaining about "that incessant beeping".

He knocks twice on Vala's door and gets no answer, decides against using his security card to override her lock just to make sure because she's strong and she'll be okay and she's probably just elsewhere. The cafeteria is a dead end. SG-7 is in there getting some pre-mission chow, but otherwise it's empty except for the guy mopping the floor and someone scraping old food into the trash can. He checks the gym next, then the shooting range that doesn't officially exist on level 17. He's just about ready to have Walter page her when he decides to go poking around level 18.

Level 18 is where the social scientists get their geek on. Cam had figured that the social scientists would treat Jackson about the same way the the natural scientists treat Sam: like a cross between the popular girl in high school that everyone wants to date or be best friends with and their biggest hero. Turns out, though, there's a different dynamic going on up on level 18 and social sciences is split into two groups, Jackson and everyone else.

Only word Cam can think for the way things work up here is 'bizarre' because Jackson is the head honcho, no question about it, but he never acts like it. It's not some cool boss thing either. He's seen Jackson get snappish with his staff and it's not pretty. It's just that Jackson doesn't care and he uses all of his clout to get away with taking the work that isn't his research and dumping it off on someone else. As far as Cam can tell, he exists in a little bubble in his lab and mostly only steps outside of it to exercise a rare veto on a hiring or assign to someone else a project he's lost interest in.

'course, Vala spends most of her on-base working time on level 18 too, but Cam's not quite sure where she fits into the dynamic.

He sticks his head into the lounge by Nyan's lab. Of all the places in the SGC, the anthrogeek lounge is the most normal looking. There's a couch and a coffee maker and a passive aggressive note about not stealing other people's food stuck to the front of the mini-fridge. Take away the concrete walls and the picture of Doc Garibaldi being held upside down by an Unas on 526 and it could pass for a regular office break room.

There are only two people in there today. Doc Loretta Hancock is reading the newspaper and some guy Cam recognizes by face but not name is watching TV.

The sense of listlessness that's been swirling around him all day finally settles in under his skin. Cam shrugs off the shivers and knocks once on the door.

"You guys seen Vala?"

"Check the manuscripts room," Hancock says. "She was in there earlier."

She's not in the manuscripts room. She is in the library, sitting on the floor, going through a file box full of papers.

"My place, we're leaving in—" Cam looks at his watch. He's lost almost twenty minutes looking for her. "Fifteen. Meet us on level 11. Make yourself pretty."

"I'm always pretty," Vala says not looking up from her work.

"And grab some of those 'refreshments' you're always bringing home from off world while you're at it."

"I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't."

Grapevine's not wrong about where Jackson's been spending most of his time. Cam runs into Landry in the elevator.

"Frankly, it's starting to creep me out," Landry says. "Every time I look up, he's there. Man doesn't seem to move."

"Yes, sir."

"I can be patient up to a point, but he's not doing his work. When he isn't standing in the conference room, he's taking personal days. Things are getting backed up. I can't let it go indefinitely."

"No, sir."

"I tried talking to him about taking some substantial time off, a real vacation, but he's not interested. He's got to make a decision, either he's at work or he's not."

"Yes, sir."

"I'm counting on you to straighten this out."

"Yes, sir."

There are days when "yes", "no", and "sir" are Cam's very favorite words.

Jackson's standing, arms across his chest, in the briefing room when Cam walks in. Cam rubs the back of his neck and tries to figure how to approach. It's kind of like figuring out a finicky old cat, dealing with Jackson. You never know if he's going to want to cuddle or go for the throat.

Of all of them, Cam's had the hardest time with Jackson. Sam knows him from way back and will gleefully laugh her butt of at him, but end of the day he knows where she stands and he knows she's got his back. Teal'c, for all that the Weber Basin only hints at the man's depths, tends to see people as those he owes loyalty to and those he doesn't. Once Cam was one of those he did, things got much, much easier.

And Vala, well, she likes him. It's mostly just good fun between them and though there are days he'd happily lock her in a closet and misplace the key for an hour or six, in some ways, she's the least complicated relationship of them all.

It's only with Jackson that Cam's never quite figured out where he stands. He thinks he's got the man's respect. Figures he's earned his trust. He's pretty sure they've even got a friendship thing going. It's just that he's got this feeling that Jackson views him like a bratty younger brother some days and this whole asserting authority and leadership doesn't hold much water with him.

Still. Sometimes. 

"Jackson. Follow me."

And without a word he does. Finicky old cat.

They swing by Sam's lab and Cam gives Daniel the job of getting Sam to level 11 and waiting for him by the elevator that goes to the surface in five minutes and mentions in passing as he leaves that he'll send Vala down for both of them if they aren't up there. Vala can be an excellent motivational force, sometimes even when she isn't there.

Teal'c is in the gym, doing lateral raises on the free weights. Cam carefully doesn't notice that there are fifteen less pounds in each hand than there would have been before they went to the Ida Galaxy. 

Cam hasn't been thinking about that, hasn't been noticing those things for a while now and he's starting to wonder if maybe he should be. Because it's a huge burden that they've asked Teal'c to carry and the man has some of the broadest shoulders he's ever seen, but maybe even that's not enough.

Cam can't even imagine what it must be like for him. He lost his closest friends in the whole world. And there's no getting around the fact that those people died, that the Sam and Cameron and Vala and Daniel and Landry that Teal'c knows now are not the same people that died on that ship. How well did he know them? As well as anyone can ever know another person. Fifty years with no distractions, just...them.

Cam wonders if he ever told Teal'c about the time he got rip roarin' drunk and his buddies convinced him to take a naked swim (at night, in October) and all that followed. Did he tell him the stuff he never told anyone? The way he nearly died in that lake, too drunk to put one arm in front of the other and swim to shore. The way he'd never felt more alive than at the moment he felt himself start to go under, right before Deputy Dale Myers appeared like a wet and pissed off white knight and drug him back to shore.

Did they talk about the things you don't talk about? Did they talk about politics? Did they discuss religion and not bookmark every statement with "well I could be wrong" and "according to some people" but instead say what they thought and believed? Did Daniel talk about Sha're, freely and openly? Did Sam talk about her father and growing up and her fears? Did Teal'c talk about his son and what it is to be Teal'c of the Tau'ri?

No wonder Teal'c won't tell them what happened on that ship. It's far too personal and compared to the friends he lost, they're practically strangers to him.

Teal'c sets his weights down. There's a fine sheen of sweat on his skin.

"Colonel Mitchell."

"Teal'c."

He wants to say, "I'm sorry I'm not the friend you lost." He wants to say, "I wish I could figure out what you need so I could give it to you."

He says, "Party at my house. All you can eat microwave popcorn and free alien booze. You in?"

Teal'c nods. "Indeed."

The words aren't there yet, but Cam thinks that maybe someday he'll be able to find them.

On the way out, Landry finds him again and tells him that the IOA is passing the blame around and they're laying most of it on Marrick. It's not unexpected and everyone's known from the start that the IOA's "apology" is going to be nothing more than an extended exercise in covering their rear ends, but there's still this moment of pure incandescent rage where Cam can barely hear the sound of Landry speaking over the blood rushing in his ears.

And then Teal'c's hand is on his shoulder, brining him back to reality. And then they're picking up their stragglers, leaving the base, and stepping out into the Colorado heat wave.

And if Cam's knuckles are white from gripping the steering wheel while he drives them all home, no one says anything.

It's only when he gets them all back to his apartment that Cam realizes he doesn't have the first clue of what he's doing. He hated those group therapy sessions at the rehab hospital, he's not sure why he's trying to force them on anyone else except that he's scared. He's scared that without the crushing force of the Ori threat to hold them together, they'll fall apart. He's not egotistical enough to think he can hold them together on his own, but maybe they can find a way to hold each other together.

They take up positions around his living room, Sam and Teal'c on either side of the couch, Jackson on the floor between them, Vala sprawled on his recliner, leaving Cam with an old metal and vinyl chair that he has to drag in from the kitchen. He spins it around and rests his arms on the back of the chair. No one asks what they're doing here.

Cam hasn't asked himself what Jack O'Neil would do in a while, since Thursday last at least, but right now Cam is wishing he'd thought to give the general a call. Maybe asked the man to fly out. At the very least had a long conversation about how he kept it all from falling apart after the Goa'uld were gone.

Except, it did fall apart, didn't it? Not in a bad way, maybe, but without the Goa'uld to hold them together, SG1 drifted apart. Cam's not selfless enough not to be glad that it didn't last, but he at least he can see that it probably wasn't a bad thing that they drifted. Not for them as they were, not then.

But now isn't then, and they aren't as they were, and Cam _knows_, somehow, deep down, that he can't let them drift. Not now. Not yet. They need each other in a marrow-level way that he can't begin to understand much less explain.

And so they sit, staring at walls with Vala's impressive collection of extra-planetary liquor sitting on the coffee table untouched.

"Did you meet with the IOA yet?" Sam asks finally, making everyone jump a little.

"Tomorrow." It's quiet again and then Cam stands up, so fast that the chair falls over and hits the floor with a muffled thump. "Men in suits that cost four figures give an order that gets a whole lot of people killed and they get to go out to dinner after while what little is left of Marrick's body is in a specimen container at Area 51 and I've got to write letters to the families of dead crewmen."

It's not like he's naive, it's not like he doesn't know. It's just that he's tired of it.

"It's always men in suits," Daniel says.

"Not always," Sam says.

"No," Daniel says. "Always. The suits aren't always the same, but it's always--" He breaks off, hits his thigh with his fist and gets up, walking to the kitchen where he'll find ten-hour-old coffee that's been sitting out on the counter since Cam made it first thing this morning and probably drink it. Caffeine is Daniel's intoxicant of choice. Cam thinks maybe Daniel has been under stress for so long that he doesn't understand how not to be. That it's the calm that scares him, not the jitters.

"What is a human to a Goa'uld except a new outfit?" Vala asks. They can hear Daniel in the kitchen, the clink of a mug, the beeps from the microwave.

Daniel comes back out with Cam's mug from Barcelona in his hand. "I took the last--"

Cam shrugs and Jackson doesn't finish the sentence.

"People in suits," Sam says quietly, thoughtfully.

"Suits from bad Vegas acts for the Goa'uld," Cam says. "Metaphysical suits on the Ancients."

"Men and women and snakes," Daniel says.

"In suits that never get any dirtier than they want them to get," Cam adds.

"And what are we?" Teal'c asks. His voice is rough, thick with exhaustion.

"Pawns," Cam says.

Daniel sets the coffee down on the table. "No. No, we're free moral agents who are always in control of one thing. No matter what, we control whether we do right or wrong."

And whether it's something someone said or it was just time, Cam doesn't know, but Vala sits up suddenly and rests her forehead on her palm. She makes a sound, a choked sob, and gets up. Daniel follows her into the bathroom and, because the walls in Cam's apartment are thin like wet newspaper, they can hear them in there. Vala's crying, held back at first and then louder and uncontrolled. Daniel's talking, but his voice is pitched low and the words are lost.

They sit, the three of them, listening to Vala's crying and Daniel's soft voice.

Teal'c says, "I am so weary."

"It's over now," Cam says, but Vala is still sobbing and no one has to say what they all know. It's not over. Maybe the men in suits can move on and maybe they can't. Whether they'll find moral absolution or attain to the heights of enlightenment, Cam doesn't know and doesn't care. For the people with muddy boots and blood under their fingernails, it's not over. Won't be for a long, long time.

Cam swallows hard and picks his chair up off the floor. Jackson's coffee is on the table getting cold. Sam gets up and takes the mug into into the kitchen. Dumps it out, Cam figures.

They wait.

After a while the crying stops and they can hear water running. When they come out, Vala's face is blotchy and Jackson's eyes are red. Vala curls back up in the recliner, pulling the afghan that Cam's mom made for him while he was in the hospital down off the back of the chair and curling up under it. Jackson looks at the table, doesn't say a word about the coffee, and sits down at Vala's feet. He wraps one hand around her ankle.

"We'll be alright," Cam says.

"No we won't," Jackson says. "But we'll keep going anyway."

"You don't believe that," Cam says.

"Which part?" Jackson asks.

Cam takes a breath and exhales show and steady. He doesn't reply. Jackson meets his eyes, just for a second, and Cam sees the flash of feeling behind them. On a good day, Jackson's a little hard to get a read on. On a bad one, he's the most cryptic and difficult man Cam's ever met. Cam thinks that little flash behind his eyes means, _No, I don't believe it, and yes, we will be okay, but I wanted to hear you say it again because sometimes I need someone else to carry the burden of believing._

But then, it might just mean, _I wanted that coffee._ Never can tell.

There's still a lot of booze on the coffee table and no one's touching it. Sometimes you've got to feel the damage, let it hurt for a little like it's supposed to.

Teal'c twines his hands together on his stomach. His eyes are closed and he looks something that Cam never thought he'd see: old. Teal'c lost fifty years—or maybe he gained them, but either way he's not the man he was.

"I have learned," Teal'c says without opening his eyes, "that the more isolated those giving the orders are from those carrying them out, the more it is likely that suffering will follow." 

Vala makes a sound in the back of her throat. Daniel reaches up and takes one of her hands in his, rubbing his thumb back and forth across her knuckles.

Teal'c opens his eyes. "I have also learned that those charged with carrying out orders often have more power to change things than they know."

They're quiet for a long time after that. It's not late. The late afternoon daylight is filtering in through the curtains.

"Jack called," Sam says. She slips and calls him Jack more often than not these days, when she's out of uniform, when it's just them. And Cam thinks, _Good for her_. "We're all going to get invited to Washington sometime in the next few days."

Jackson snorts and Vala conspicuously doesn't make a crack about parties and what she's going to wear.

"They'll probably give somebody a medal," Cam says. "Just to have something to do."

"Haven't they run out of them by now?" Jackson asks. 

Cam knows for a fact that there are only so many civilian medals the Air Force gives out and that Jackson's gotten every one he possibly can. Ditto Teal'c. No one mentions giving one to Vala because everyone knows they won't. Vala makes too many people uncomfortable. Let her on a stage and she might speak her mind. No one wants to eat overcooked chicken and mushy carrots if they can't have a side order of inspirational speeches to help it go down easy.

"Do we have to go?" Vala asks. "Because I know a lovely planet with sandy beaches and a clothing discouraged policy and as long as the cease fire is holding, it's a wonderful place to visit."

"We have to go," Cam says. He glances at Teal'c. "Well, we don't have to. But we will. Someone's got to keep an eye on the suits."

Sam smiles.

The booze gets opened after that, and some way or another, _Annie Hall_ ends up in the DVD player.

Six hours later, Cam wakes up with carpeting under his cheek and a sleepover going on in his living room. They're all still holding a little too tightly to the pain for any of them to have gotten good and drunk, but they're hungover all the same.

Cam sits up blinking and takes in the scene. Sam's taken the recliner and Teal'c is stretched out on the couch, snoring softly. Cam makes his way to his bedroom and finds Jackson sitting up awake with Vala curled up next to him.

"Hey," Cam says softly.

Jackson blinks and focuses on him as if just now realizing there's another person in the room. "Hey."

Cam thinks he should go because even if it's his bed, this is something he doesn't think he's meant to be part of. Except there's one thing left to say.

He steps closer to Jackson and puts his hand on the man's shoulder. Jackson looks up at him, eyebrows raised.

"We'll be alright."

Jackson's mouth twitches. "You said that already." 

"Thought maybe you needed to hear it again."

"Yeah. Maybe."

Jackson nudges Vala and she shifts over, closer to the side of the bed. He scoots toward her, rubbing her back slowly until she falls back into a deep sleep. Cam recognizes an invitation when he sees one and he's too tired and sore to turn this one down. He falls gratefully into the bed.

He lays there listening to Jackson's slow, slightly nasal breathing and Vala muttering softly in her sleep and falls asleep confident that they'll be there when he wakes up.

end


End file.
